I read the advice and upgraded because I care more about battery life than an untethered jailbreak - when your battery life only drains 1% over three hours when the device is in standby mode, I'd rather take that over the minor inconvenience of needing a computer to boot my phone every three months. Also, the fact still remains that you need to point it at an IPSW to boot this software version when using Redsn0w.

Don't be condescending and assume that people don't know what they're doing.

Well, without sounding condescending - if you are using a beta from the dev builds:

1) The only way to remove yourself from the beta firmware requirements is to do a restore rather than update - this is most likely why you cannot use stock IPSW's from Apple. Redsn0w cannot download dev beta builds to cache and requires you to provide them, and you can't upgrade until you've completely restored to a stock firmware.

3) Yes, Redsn0w (and all limera1n based jailbreaks) require the IPSW. However, where ac1d and redsn0w differentiate is that ac1d pre-packages these pieces of necessary (and legally protected) pieces of Apple's code (bootrom / etc). redsn0w fetches the IPSW's from Apple upon device discovery. This means that until you hardware an iOS device (and thus providing at least some proof of ownership - a key factor in part of the legality of jailbreaking), you won't have that code - and once you DO have that code, you've obtained it from the appropriately legal source.